The virtual currency exchange rate is rising day by day in line with the growing tendency to pull currencies out of central banks’ control, a phenomenon that could spread to countries with fragile financial conditions and high risks to users, economists warn.
Ludwig Sopran, chief economist at Euler Hermes, said that the Bitcoin “shows a desire to give up exchange rates,” citing the impact of the virtual currency on the impact of the Ober group on the taxi sector.
This is also the view of Yves Schweifati, the founder of Topam Asset Management, which launched the first Bitcoin Deposit Fund in Europe. “Yes, that’s exactly the case,” he says. “The goal is to escape central censorship.
Bitcoin is available on private exchange platforms and not in regulated markets. Controlled by a wide range of Internet users in the absence of any official exchange rate or central bank.
Some investors have called it “digital gold” with record levels of $ 8,000 this week, up from $ 1,000 at the beginning of the year.
“We do not need central banks,” Schweifati said. He is convinced that the last record levels have come from these institutions.
The growing interest in this currency, created by an information engineer borrowed by Satosh Nakamoto or several engineers, has been used even in well-known financial institutions, such as the Chicago Stock Exchange (CMA) and veteran universities that teach students the fundamentals of information engineering, Closed records that form the basis for default currencies.
– Heavy speculation –
But this currency also raises the ambitions of countries in difficult economic situations, such as Zimbabwe or Venezuela where currencies are no longer equal to a penny due to high inflation. Caracas has recently been forced to issue a new 100 billion Bolivar banknote, the largest one since 100 Bolivar.
“Instead of adopting another country’s currency, such as the dollar, you may resort to hypothetical currencies,” said IMF Director-General Christine Lagarde recently, “Let’s take countries with weak institutions and unstable national currencies.”
Economists point to the growing interest in biotech in developing countries whose populations are more accessible to the Internet than to traditional banking services.
Financial centers and some well-known experts in the economy have sounded the alarm, warning against a currency used for illegal transactions and subject to “severe speculation”.
The governor of the Bank of France, François Filorway de Gallo, has warned the users of the Bitcoin since the summer, telling them that they do so “at their own risk.”
– “Bubble” –
Jean Tyrol, Nobel Prize laureate for economics, is also of this opinion. “It’s a bubble,” he told AFP on the sidelines of a seminar in Paris this week.
“It is not a tacit value and may collapse overnight,” he said, “and I advise French banks not to invest at all in the Pitcairn.”
For his part, Sopran wants the authorities to raise awareness about the risks of this currency, especially among potential investors. “The financial gains are great, the losses, and more people want to go into this area, but without realizing the real risks,” he said.
This currency often suffers a sudden sharp decline, as in the case of information attacks or conflicts of interest among its custodians or financial regulators issuing warnings.
But Bitcoin is rising rapidly and some investors are expecting $ 10,000 soon, barely exceeding one dollar in 2011.
